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Sunday, July 8, 2018

6 Movies for Fans of "Hocus Pocus"

There are inevitably some movies that a person simply can't judge according to anything approaching critical standards. I don't mean liking movies that are bad (or so bad they're good - my favorite in this category is the extremely silly The Magic Sword), but rather movies that are so deeply embedded in one's life that, well... their flaws are as much virtues as flaws, if flaws can even be found. For those of us of the home video generation, certain movies have become cult favorites not only because of their kookiness, kitschy-ness, or quirkiness, but because we've seen them so many times that we can quote them from opening to closing credits.

Hocus Pocus was savaged by critics upon theatrical release, but as a staple on the Disney Channel, it became an adored Halloween classic for 90's kids. Its combination of witchcraft, snark, and celebration of the sibling bond squared the circle of family entertainment, throwing Bette Midler, Kathy Najimy, and Sarah Jessica Parker as a trio of featherbrained witches into the midst of a heartwarming story of a brother looking out for his younger sister. Though slightly more kid-friendly than, say, The Addams Family and Addams Family Values, the fun of Hocus Pocus lies, at least in part, in growing into the buried adult humor, especially in Midler's performance. The stakes in Hocus Pocus are significantly higher than in your average kids' Halloween film. Whereas in the far tamer Halloweentown, the kids are threatened by being frozen in time (though the movie never succeeds in making that threat especially menacing), in Hocus Pocus, a child has died within the first five minutes of the film. The witches are funny, but they are also genuinely evil and genuinely dangerous. Max, Dani, and Allison are not saving a cartoonish fantasy world; they are trying to keep each other alive. The witch sisters aren't smart, but they are powerful. This counterbalance to the absurd humor rescues the movie from wallowing in silliness and places it squarely in the horror-comedy genre.

Doth I protest too much? Perhaps, but it seems likely that Hocus Pocus could end up as the kiddie Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! At least part of its cult status is due to the difficulty of finding films that are similarly creepy, yet ludicrous, wacky, yet scary: here are six recommendations for Hocus Pocus fans, each with a quote to match!
"I smell children."Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971)
Though often dismissed as the lesser Mary Poppins, given its combination of animation and live action, its no-nonsense, magical protagonist, songs by the Sherman Brothers, and the presence of David Tomlinson, it would be better to call Bedknobs and Broomsticks the darker Mary Poppins. Instead of the specter of workaholism menacing the nuclear family in an otherwise sunny and secure world, in this film, the Blitzkrieg and Nazi raiders are the dangers posed to three refugee orphans, the witch - played with a deliciously schoolmarmish stiff upper lip by Angela Lansbury - forced to take them in, and the charlatan who just happened to stumble on a genuine book of spells (Tomlinson). There is a scrappier quality to the storytelling, but the effects are top-notch, culminating in an incredible scene of an army of animated - as in moving, not drawn - suits of armor going toe-to-toe with Nazi gunners.
"I put a spell on you and now you're mine."Bell Book and Candle (1958)
This Hollywood oddity is usually remembered today as the inspiration for Bewitched. A frigidly feline Kim Novak stars as a bored, barefoot witch in Manhattan, who sets her spells on her clean-cut publisher neighbor, played by Jimmie Stewart in his final leading man role, with the help of her cat and familiar, Pyewacket (played by Novak's actual pet!). The romance is enjoyable enough, but the witchy shenanigans of the supporting cast are far more fun: Jack Lemmon plays a bongo-playing, mischief-making warlock with a creepily glazed smile, Elsa Lanchester is a daffy, gossiping witch with a gypsy sense of style, and Hermione Gingold is the grand-dame of the magical set. With weirdly diaphanous costumes by Jean Louis and set design by Cary Odell and Louis Diage that draws inspiration from the avant-garde Greenwich Village club scene of the time, the movie is an eccentric charmer, dipping only a toe into transgressive politics, but unafraid of combining wackiness and tragedy.
"Go to hell!" "Oh, I've been there, thank you. I found it quite lovely."I Married a Witch (1942)
French auteur René Clair directs this Hollywood comedy starring Veronica Lake as a witch who, after being torched in Puritan Salem, comes back from the dead to wreak havoc on the descendant of her accuser, a twitchy politician on the eve of both his wedding and gubernatorial elections, played by Fredric March, only to accidentally drink her own love potion. Again, the supporting cast is fabulous, with Cecil Kellaway as Lake's demonic father, Robert Benchley as March's friend, always ready to take a stiff drink in his place, and Susan Hayward as March's shrewish fiancee, a thankless role that she enlivens with a double dose of venom. Fast-paced and frothy, this film would fit snugly in the oeuvre of either Ernst Lubitsch or Preston Sturges (who was an uncredited producer). Like so many mainstream films about witches and the men they love, the ending frustrates, but this film is otherwise delicious.
"Hang him on a hook and let me play with him!"The Love Witch (2016)The Love Witch, written, directed, produced, scored, costumed, designed, and edited by Anna Biller, is one of the most singularly weird witch movies ever made, drawing as deeply on Italian thrillers and gialli of the '70s as it does on swoony romance paperbacks, tarot cards, and Renaissance Faire culture. Samantha Robinson, in a star-making performance, plays Elaine, a witch so bent on amorous fulfillment that she overdoes it every time, leaving a trail of dead would-be Romeos in her wake. A psychedelic color swirl of reds, pinks, purples, greens, and yellows, nonchalant nudity, and a poker-faced sense of humor elevate the occasionally clunky dialogue, though that clunkiness may very well be part of the point. Elaine is so deeply ensorceled by millennia's worth of misogynistic notions of love and romance that the magic she performs on men to force them into a performance of that love turns in on itself and is reborn as the same kind of violence patriarchy enacts on women; if she speaks in women's magazine platitudes, it's no wonder. You will be singing "Love Is a Magickal Thing" for weeks afterwards.
"Max likes your yabbos. In fact, he loves them."Miranda (1948)
This sweet, subtly sexually transgressive British comedy follows the adventures of a mermaid, played by the exquisite Glynis Johns (Mary Poppins, The Court Jester), who persuades a vacationing, and decidedly married, doctor (Griffith Jones) to take her to London with him to see the sights. She's always wanted to attend the opera at Covent Garden, you see. Johns's mermaid is irresistible to men - including a very young David Tomlinson sans moustache - and soon has a string of straying beaux, happy to overlook her diet of raw fish and her total lack of commitment, but the lovely thing is that, for once, the mermaid isn't a siren luring men to their doom. She just likes everybody and likes to have a good time. She treats all her conquests with the same cool and generous lust - and the ending is not one you're going to see in a Hollywood film! The inimitable and brilliant Margaret Rutherford plays an eccentric registered nurse.
"You know I always wanted a child. And now I think I'll have one. On toast!"The Wicker Man (1973)
Robin Hardy's folk-song-laden horror film has acquired a carapace of spoofs and spoofs of spoofs, but it remains a stubbornly unique contribution to the genre, remake be damned. A sternly religious policeman (Edward Woodward) flies out to a remote Hebridean island where a child has been reported missing and finds himself in a hotbed of pagan ritual, led by Lord Summerisle, played by Christopher Lee in a no-holds-barred, go-for-broke performance. A collection of kooks, from Diane Cilento to Lindsay Kemp, round out the cast, but despite the hijinks, a mixture of Summer of Love sex, nude Waldorf School-style games, and Hieronymous Boschesque processions, The Wicker Man ceases to be a fish-out-of-water comedy blended with an Ealing Studios satire in the final scene, all the more haunting for being such a hairpin turn in tone.